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“A Superior Kind of Working Woman”: the Contested Meaning of Vocational Education for Girls in Progressive Era Chicago

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“A Superior Kind of Working Woman”: the Contested Meaning of Vocational Education for Girls in Progressive Era Chicago Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S153778142100013X The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2021), 20, 392–410 doi:10.1017/S153778142100013X ARTICLE https://www.cambridge.org/core “A Superior Kind of Working Woman”: The Contested Meaning of Vocational Education for Girls in Progressive Era Chicago . Ruby Oram* Texas State University - San Marcos Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Progressive Era school officials transformed public education in American cities by teaching male students trades like foundry, carpentry, and mechanics in classrooms outfitted like factories. Historians have demonstrated how this “vocational education movement” was , on championed by male administrators and business leaders anxious to train the next gener- 01 Jul 2021 at 15:00:13 ation of expert tradesmen. But women also hoped vocational education could prepare female students for industrial careers. In the early twentieth century, members of the National Women’s Trade Union League demanded that public schools open trade programs to female students and teach future working women the history of capitalism and the philosophy of collective bargaining. Their ambitious goals were tempered by some middle- class reformers and club women who argued vocational programs should also prepare , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at female students for homemaking and motherhood. This article uses Chicago as a case study to explore how Progressive Era women competed and collaborated to reform vocational education for girls, and how female students responded to new school programs designed to prepare them for work both in and outside the home. Keywords: Chicago; education; labor; school reform; women and gender In 1914, Agnes Nestor of the Chicago Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) went to the offices of the Board of Education with a resolution in hand. Nestor, a twenty-three-year- old glovemaker and labor activist, hoped to convince school officials to offer a course on collective bargaining for students enrolled in vocational programs at Chicago public high schools. She and her colleagues argued that female students in particular needed to learn their labor rights to help women workers avoid dangerous and poorly paid positions in the industrial economy. Nestor was surprised when the city’s superintendent of schools, https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Dr. Ella Flagg Young, agreed to a meeting. Young and Nestor did not always get along. The first woman to oversee a major school system in America, Young was more a supporter of “household arts” education and had ignored trade union women’s requests © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work. Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S153778142100013X The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 393 to expand vocational programs for girls. Nestor was shocked with Young expressed enthusiasm for a collective bargaining course and agreed to bring Nestor’s resolution to https://www.cambridge.org/core the Board of Education. Unfortunately, Young thought Nestor had suggested a course for girls on how to buy—a concept affiliated with the home economics movement—rather than how to bargain. “Evidently our terms were not familiar to her,” Nestor later lamented, “as she had no previous familiarity with labor.”1 This misunderstanding between Nestor and Young reflected an important division in how leading women reformers understood the purpose of vocational education for female students in Progressive Era Chicago. Labor activists like Nestor wanted public . high schools to train female students for work as skilled dressmakers and milliners so Texas State University - San Marcos they could advance to better positions in the manufacturing sector. They argued that vocational programs should help future working women assert their rights through courses on collective bargaining, the history of labor legislation, and the evolution of capitalism. Their radical goals were curbed by middle-class reformers, club women, and school administrators like Young who argued that vocational programs should teach girls domestic skills for when they presumably exited the workforce for motherhood. Many women reformers in Chicago ultimately worked together to bring vocational classes like dressmaking, designing, and cooking into the city’s public schools in the decades before World War I. Their shared assumptions about the needs of future garment , on workers and homemakers, however, led women like Nestor and Young to ignore the 01 Jul 2021 at 15:00:13 vocational field that many female students hoped to pursue: white-collar work. Historians have demonstrated how women forged cross-class alliances to address a range of social issues in Progressive Era cities. Wealthy, white society women, middle- class social reformers, and working-class labor activists created their own “female dominion of reform” in Chicago through their involvement in urban settlement houses and women’s club. Along with issues like child welfare and juvenile justice reform, , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at Chicago women were united in their concern for young, immigrant female workers who labored in downtown factories. A quarter of Chicago women and girls over the age of sixteen were employed by 1910, 77 percent of whom were immigrants from southern and eastern Europe or their American-born daughters. Women from Russia, Italy, and Poland filled some of the lowest-paid positions in the industrial workforce as string cutters, errand runners, and machine hands in garment factories. Scholars such as Maureen Flanagan have argued that female reformers advocated for women’s labor reform by supporting strikes, lobbying for protective labor laws, and forming organizations with working women like the National Women’s Trade Union League.2 Scholars have devoted less attention to the role of Progressive Era women in the development of vocational programs for girls. Between 1890 and 1917, school officials in cities like Chicago established public vocational high schools and outfitted existing schoolhouses with factory equipment for classes like carpentry, foundry, engineering, and machine shop. Historians of education suggest that this “vocational education movement” https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms was led by male school officials who hoped to better prepare working-class boys for the industrial workforce. Indeed, many Progressive Era administrators argued that a high school education would be more “practical” for the sons of immigrants if schools offered trade programs alongside a traditional college prep curriculum. Important studies of grassroots school reform by scholars like William Reese and David Hogan have highlighted how class and ethnic tensions between parents, labor activists, and school officials impacted the development of vocational programs from the outside in. Studies of grassroots school reform have yet to fully explore how and why women reformers shaped the vocational curriculum by introducing new work-oriented programs for girls in the decades before World War I.3 . Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S153778142100013X 394 Ruby Oram This article uses Chicago as a case study to demonstrate how Progressive Era women reformers embraced vocational school reform to support their broader goal of increasing https://www.cambridge.org/core public investment in female workers and caretakers. Working-class reformers in the Chicago WTUL and their allies, like Jane Addams, argued that the city should establish public vocational schools run by women to train girls for skilled positions as dressmakers, milliners, and designers. These reformers intended such programs to cater primarily to foreign-born high schoolers and the American-born children of immigrants, who accounted for 88 percent of Chicago students in 1906.4 Philanthropic women in the Chicago Woman’s Club (CWC) argued that immigrant female workers would have . cleaner homes and healthier children when they exited the workforce if vocational Texas State University - San Marcos programs for girls also included domestic skills like cooking and housekeeping. Women reformers were united in their strong conviction that public vocational schools for girls could have a profound impact on the future working lives of Chicago women. Their conflicting views on the degree to which domestic education should be included, however, reveal where branches of their reform community splintered on the question of women’s work outside the home.5 Women school reformers in Chicago compromised on a limited set of vocational programs for girls before World War I that did not align with the work goals of many female students. Chicago labor activists, middle-class reformers, and wealthy club women , on agreed that programs like sewing and dressmaking could help girls find better positions in 01 Jul 2021 at 15:00:13 the garment trades as well as provide
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